I also brew my own beer as often as I can. Once a month I retreat to a Benedictine Abbey here in Oklahoma to brew beer with them.

How did you get started in web development or programming?

I picked up an HTML book around ’93, kicked around in Flash while, took the Pascal, C, and Java classes in high school and took a webmaster vocational tech class. But I really decided to stick with web development when I hacked out my first database-powered HTML page one night in college – a table with 2 rows of dynamically-generated content using SQL Server and ASP on IIS!

How did you get involved with Mozilla?

I’ve used Firefox since I switched from Netscape Navigator. But I had only ever skirted around the contribution path (a behavior I’m also trying to address with our WebDev Stewards stuff).

As for working here, that’s a little complicated and involved a lot of luck! I built ajaxMyTop while doing “enterprise” development. When I got an unsolicited patch for it, I was hooked forever on the open-source model. So when I saw an online job posting for SourceForge.net, I jumped on it, got in, and learned a ton about open-source and web development. Four years later I saw an online job posting at Mozilla and I jumped again!

What’s something you’re particularly proud of?

I was honored to give the keynote talk at PHP Conference Brasil in 2008, where I showed how SourceForge.net used PHP. I’m proud of all the Tulsa Web Devs – doing stuff every bit as cool as the web scenes in other towns. I’m proud of my wife for putting up with all my quirks and my nearly mono-maniacal focus on web development.

What question do you wish you’d been asked?

What’s with the name ‘groovecoder’? It actually started as ‘groovepapa’ – a silly gaming handle I used for Marathon LAN parties because I always danced to techno music in my chair while playing. As I coded more, it turned into ‘groovecoder’ but it was still just a silly name. After reading The Productive Programmer, I find it describes me well – I want to be “in the groove” when I code.

If you operated a food truck, what would be your specialty?

My truck would be “Stews and Brews” – it would serve a bowl of soup with a pint of beer.